In the field such as roofing materials and exterior materials of a building, home appliances and automobiles, the needs for steel sheets having a black appearance is increasing from the viewpoints of design and so on. The surface of a steel sheet may be blackened by applying a black coating material to the surface of a steel sheet so as to form a black coating film. In the field described above, however, steel sheets with plating such as hot-dip Zn-plating, hot-dip Al-containing Zn-plating, and hot-dip Al and Mg-containing Zn-plating are used in many cases from the viewpoint of corrosion resistance. The plated steel sheet has a metallic gloss surface with silver gray color. Accordingly, in order to obtain a black appearance of quality design by application of a black coating material, a thick coating film is required to conceal the color of the plated steel sheet, resulting in high coating costs. Furthermore, the thick coating film precludes resistance welding such as spot welding, which is another disadvantage.
As a method for concealing the metallic gloss with silver gray color of a plated steel sheet without formation of a black coating film, a method for blackening a plating layer itself has been proposed (e.g. refer to PTL 1). PTL 1 discloses a method for forming a thin black layer at the plating layer surface by blowing high-temperature water vapor onto a hot-dip Al-containing Zn-plated steel sheet for 24 hours or more. The black-plated steel sheet according to PTL 1 has a plating layer which contains elements for accelerating blackening such as Mg, Cu and Bi. According to the description, however, with a content of elements for accelerating blackening more than 1%, the effect for accelerating blackening rather decreases due to suppression of the oxidation of Zn.